Will the OneDrive massive storage drop affect you?

Microsoft has announced that it is dropping the amount of storage each of its OneDrive subscribers gets either for free or as part of Office 365 home membership.

Users who have a free OneDrive account will find their storage limit dropped from 15GB to 5GB, with the changes to be enforced from early 2016. In addition, the 15GB camera roll storage bonus will be dropped entirely.

On the up side, you'll still be able to access any files over the new 5GB limit for a year after the change has been made and you'll get a year's free subscription to Office 365 Personal, which includes 1TB of storage.

Those who want to pay for OneDrive storage will also find the existing plans are changing. From 2016, there will no longer be 100GB and 200GB options for new subscribers. Instead, Microsoft is simplifying its subscription options to just offer one 50GB plan for $1.99 a month.

If you already subscribe to 100GB or 200GB plans, you can continue to use them without penalty.

And those lucky enough to have actually received the unlimited OneDrive storage that was being rolled out to Office 365 Home, Personal or University subscribers will find their accounts capped, once again, at 1TB.

To be honest, that won't affect everybody as Microsoft hadn't finished the unlimited upgrade rollout anyway. Indeed, many Office 365 subscribers we have asked had theirs capped at 1TB still.

This comes into effect immediately and those affected in this category have a year to clear their accounts of files over the 1TB limit.

The changes, Microsoft claims, have been enforced thanks to some customers using the unlimited storage option to back up their entire PCs or store entire movie collections. In some cases, it says, this exceeded 75TB per user - a staggering amount.